Written by

Sean O’Sullivan

The News Journal

PHILADELPHIA — A second Delaware woman, who worked at Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s West Philadelphia abortion clinic, testified today that it was “standard procedure” to snip the necks of any babies that were delivered by patients before the abortion due to labor-inducing drugs.

And Lynda Williams, 44, of Wilmington, said Gosnell taught her how to flip the body of the baby over and snip its neck with a pair of scissors to ensure “fetal demise.”

Williams also testified that she followed Gosnell’s orders one time, when Gosnell was away either running, swimming or working at a clinic in Delaware, and took a baby that was delivered in a toilet and snipped its neck.

“It jumped, the arm,” she said, showing the jury by raising her arm.

Williams told investigators she only snipped a neck the one time, “because it gave me the creeps.”

“I only do what I’m told to do,” she told the jury. “What I was told to do was snip their neck.”

Gosnell, 72, who is facing multiple charges of first-degree murder and a possible death sentence if convicted in Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, did not react to the testimony. Instead, he just calmly watched and occasionally took notes with a vague hint of a smile on his face from time to time.

Much like former employee Sherry West of Bear, Del., who testified Monday, Williams initially said she could not remember details and had to be reminded by prosecutors showing her copies of her earlier statements to investigators. When Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore initially pressed Williams to describe what she saw when she cut the neck of the child delivered in a toilet, Williams responded with a blank stare and silence.

Williams also responded the same way when asked about seeing Gosnell cut the necks of babies who were delivered before abortion procedures, admitting after reviewing earlier statements that she had seen Gosnell do this at least 30 times.

Williams said she asked Gosnell about the baby that moved, and said Gosnell told her it was just an “involuntary response” and a “last breath” because it was “already dead” due to drugs that had been administered earlier.

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“I never knew it was murder,” Williams told investigators and repeated to the jury.

Williams testified at the outset that she had only gotten as far as eighth grade in school and never graduated, though she took a course in blood work. Before working for Gosnell at his Women’s Medical Society clinic in West Philadelphia, Williams had worked for 10 years at the now-closed Atlantic Women’s Medical Services abortion clinic in Wilmington, where Gosnell worked part-time.

Williams said she was diagnosed as bipolar in 2007 after her husband was killed and left her job at Atlantic, where she sterilized instruments, and shortly thereafter went to work for Gosnell in Nov. 2008.

Williams said Gosnell knew about her diagnosis and the many medications she was taking because she was seeing Gosnell as her doctor and said he was treating her bipolar disorder, though she acknowledged Gosnell was not a therapist and did not know if he had any experience treating bipolar disorder.

Williams told the jury that during her 15 months working with Gosnell, he routinely changed paperwork on patients that were too far along in their pregnancies to get an abortion in Pennsylvania to make it appear they were at the legal limit. She also said that sometimes pain medication was either out of date or did not work and she saw Gosnell “smack” the legs of patients that squirmed during the procedure, hard enough to leave a hand print.

Williams, who remains incarcerated, has admitted to third-degree murder charges and conspiracy in this case, among other charges, and faces up to 100 years in prison at sentencing.

Williams' murder charges relate to the 2009 death of abortion patient Karnamaya Mongar and today Williams recalled how she gave Mongar, 41, repeated doses of pain medication in the hours before her abortion because Mongar was uncomfortable.

Hours later, during the abortion procedure, Williams said she saw Mongar’s skin turn grey and her breathing slow significantly and warned Gosnell. Williams said Gosnell ignored her and continued the procedure.

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When Mongar’s abortion was completed about 10 minutes after Williams’ warning, she said Gosnell checked on Mongar’s pulse and immediately began doing CPR and ordered Williams to go get help from another staffer.

Williams said once she got help, Gosnell told her to call 911, which she said she did.

After that, Williams said, “I left the room. It was scary.”

Mongar later died at the hospital and prosecutors allege the death was due to an overdose of medication administered by clinic staffers.

On cross-examination, Gosnell attorney John McMahon pointed out that Williams changed her story several times about what happened with Mongar, initially telling investigators that the problems did not happen till after the procedure was done.

Williams testified that they never hooked patients up to monitoring devices to check their pulse, heartbeat or breathing and the one monitoring machine they had in Gosnell’s clinic never worked.

Williams said she monitored patients by simply looking at them and watching for a pulse in their neck veins.

She also testified that standard procedure at the clinic was to give all patients the same doses of medicine – as outlined by a chart on the wall -- and they did not make any changes due to weight, age or other medical factors.

On cross examination, Williams said that there had never been any problems with administering drugs to “hundreds” of patients before Mongar.

Testimony ended today before cross-examination was complete. Williams is set to re-take the stand Wednesday and complete her testimony.